Doctors said he'd never recover. Here, he found hope

1of3East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Deputy NICK Tullier, above, was taken to a plane so that he could be treated at TIRR in houston after he was shot in a july 17 rampage that left three other officers dead. in houston, he is recovering in physical therapy. ﻿Photo: Kiran Chawla, TEL

2of3Nick Tullier, who was shot in the head July 17 during an ambush on six officers in Baton Rouge, has begun physical therapy at Memorial Hermann TIRR.Photo: Courtesy of Memorial Hermann TIRR

3of3Nick Tullier, who was shot in the head July 17 during an ambush on six officers in Baton Rouge, has begun physical therapy at Memorial Hermann TIRR.Photo: Courtesy of Memorial Hermann TIRR

Doctors in Baton Rouge said Nick Tullier would never recover.

The Louisiana sheriff's deputy had survived a bullet to the head - one of six officers shot in 10 minutes by a gunman this summer - but the damage to his brain appeared irreversible. Tullier, physicians said, would likely spend the rest of his life in a vegetative state. Eyes open, staring at the ceiling, never to regain consciousness.

His family didn't believe that, and in November they brought him to TIRR Memorial Hermann, one of the nation's premier rehabilitation centers.

Doctors here offered a different outlook. Within a few days, they determined that, not only was it possible Tullier could recover, but that he was already conscious and had been for weeks.

For his loved ones, it was as if Tullier, 41, had been brought back to life. "A miracle," his father, James Tullier called it.

Such stories are routine at TIRR, said Dr. Sunil Kothari, director of the hospital's disorders of consciousness program and a professor of rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine. They hear it all the time, he said, a variation of the same line: "But, the doctors told us this could never happen."

That's what makes TIRR one of the best in the country at treating critical brain injuries: The ability to accurately diagnose a patient's level of consciousness.

It's a rapidly developing science, Kothari said, one that isn't yet applied at most hospitals across the country. He estimates four out of every five patients arriving at TIRR who've been diagnosed as vegetative are actually awake and aware but unable to communicate.

Just five or 10 years ago, he said, even TIRR's highly trained physicians might not have noticed the subtle cues - a flicker in the eye, a subtle head movement - that can signal that a patient is awake.

On Tullier's second day at the rehab hospital, his therapists got him up and out of bed and soon found that, while upright, he could move his head slightly - forward and to the side - and quickly went to work teaching him to control the motions to answer questions. Forward meant, "Yes." To the side meant, "No."

Within hours, he was communicating. Turns out, his family was right: He really had been listening for weeks as they sat at his bedside in Baton Rouge, talking and praying with him. He even knew they'd taken him to Texas.

Now, with help, Tullier gets dressed and out of bed everyday for the beginning stages of what will likely be years of physical therapy, said Julie Welch, rehabilitation manager for the brain injury and stroke programs at TIRR Memorial Hermann, describing the process of stirring consciousness as "somewhat of a fine art."

TIRR has helped a number of high-profile patients over the years, including U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who came for physical therapy after she was shot in the head in 2011. Less attention, though, has been paid to the hospital's disorders of consciousness program.

Each year, the hospital sees about 50 patients like Tullier, said Katherine O'Brien, a clinical neuropsychologist. She recalled a recent patient who'd spent a year at a nursing home, thought to be in a permanent vegetative state, after being crushed under a car. His wife brought him to TIRR and discovered that he'd been conscious all along.

"It happens all the time," O'Brien said.

But even they were surprised by how quickly Tullier has progressed in so little time. "Nick is doing remarkably well," Kothari said a month after his arrival, considering all that he'd been through.

"We had no hope," James Tullier said. "Nick wasn't supposed to survive one day, two days, five days. And now, look at all he's accomplished."

The gunman who shot him, 29-year-old Gavin Long, ambushed and shot five other officers in Baton Rouge on July 17, killing three of them, before police gunned him down. Tullier was shot in the head and abdomen. His brain was further damaged in the aftermath by a lack of blood flow, as paramedics repeatedly restarted his heart.

Despite his incredible progress, there's no telling whether he'll recover further. Some patients "hit a wall," Kothari said, and never recover beyond a state of minimal consciousness. Others recover so completely, he said, they eventually return to work.

Tullier seems determined to get better. Without fail during physical therapy, when staff ask if he wants to keep going, Tullier leans his head forward, signaling "Yes."

Dad isn't surprised.

His boy has always been a fighter, he said. He thought back to a decade ago, when his son crashed into a car on his police motorcycle, sending him flying 60 feet through the air and crashing into pavement.

His son recovered from those injuries; he'll recover from these, he said.

"You want to know who's strong? Nick," said James Tullier, wearing a green T-shirt with the hashtag "#tullierstrong. "He's got that willpower. It's in his head. He's the fighter. He's the strong one." ¢

Mike Hixenbaugh is an investigative reporter focused on exposing fraud and abuse in health care. Previously, he was a reporter at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where his work on the military and veterans affairs was co-published with ProPublica, NBC News and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley. Mike graduated from the University of Akron in 2007, before going to work for small newspapers in Ohio and then North Carolina.